Wednesday in Ottawa, Alex Ovechkin looked like Alex Ovechkin again. His spectacular goal late in the third period broke a 2-2 tie and catapulted the Capitals towards a 5-3 victory.

For Ovechkin, it was just his second goal in 14 games, a stretch that’s featured the firing of coach Bruce Boudreau, the hiring of coach Dale Hunter, and a whole heap of criticism directed towards Washington’s superstar and captain.

But Ovechkin maintains the recent dry spell wasn’t for a lack of effort or chances.

“Sometimes you try everything and it doesn’t work. Sometimes you shoot the puck from the redline and it goes in, you never know when pucks go in,” Ovechkin said, as per the Washington Post. “Especially against Ottawa like first period I have three, 100 percent chances to score goal but I didn’t score. Third period again, I have chances to shoot the puck perfectly and make the move but I didn’t score. I say … what’s going on? Why puck don’t want to go in the net?’ It’s just a moment. When you working hard, when you make some plays, when you have opportunity to score goals — puck goes in.”

First of all, hopefully you read that using a Russian accent in your head. You’d have had 100 percent chance to make laugh.

Secondly, it will be interesting to see if Ovechkin can put together another strong performance tonight versus the Leafs at the Verizon Center.

According to assistant coach Dean Evason, the Caps have been trying to get Ovechkin to mix up the repertoire once he gets in the attacking zone.

“We’re just trying to get him to have different looks,” Evason said, “show different looks, pull up a little more, shoot from different angles, go to different places on the ice and open himself up. He’s doing a real good job of recognizing that and fitting it into his game.”

We can’t be sure what Ovechkin was thinking at the time, but perhaps his goal in the Ottawa game was a good example of what Evason was talking about. There was no attempt to force a cut to the middle upon entering the zone on the left wing; instead he took the puck wide and waited for an opportunity to present itself. (And that opportunity was Erik Karlsson forgetting how to stop.)

He certainly looked like the Ovechkin of old scoring that goal, didn’t he? Ovechkin has been a Leaf killer in the past but I’m still hoping this game turns out like the last Caps/Leafs one

flavadave10 - Dec 9, 2011 at 10:11 PM

Thankfully for me, it didn’t end the same way as the last one. Ovechkin is just a victim of horrible luck at this point. Geez, even the laws of physics hate him at this point. Still can’t see how that one shot of his didn’t go in.